Wear your uniform day...

I remember as a child we had a "Wear your uniform to school day", usually on BP day. Do we still do that? If not, what would it take to do that again? What better advertising is there than peer to peer advertising?

Tom

Many of our elementary school kids often wear their uniform to school on Rememberance day for the trip to the Cenetaph.

We encourage our youth to wear their uniform to school on both Feb. 22 and Nov. 10 (the school ceremonies here are on the 10th - no school Nov. 11)
The week before we remind our families about wearing the uniform to school, and usually most remember. Teachers we know in the schools are very supportive.

I am glad to see that some groups still do this. How can we get all of Scouts Canada to choose and use the same day? Who is the right person to contact?

Before I go down that road, anyone disagree with a wear your uniform day? Will adults do it too?

It is a tradition that is widely encouraged by groups in our council for youth to wear uniforms on BP day, as well as November 10th (to school) and November 11th. It is very common for elementary school aged youth to wear their uniforms. The best way we find in our group is to remind parents that these occasions are time when the youth should show off to the world that they are apart of the Scouting movement and be proud of it.

It is not so common as the age of the youth member increases. As a high school student myself, I know how hard it is to bring myself to wear my uniform on those occasions to school. It can be a very emotionally draining experience to walk into your school where fitting in is already a major challenge and then be ridiculed by your group of friends for being apart of a "nerdy", "lame" organization such as Scouts Canada. I am very proud to be a scout, but it is tough to stand up to your friends and really fight for what you believe in. Most Venturer Scouts my age find it even harder to wear the uniform, at my school of 2200 students I am the lone Scout that is able to wear his uniform. I can walk down the hallways and pick out 10-30 faces of Venturers that have attended camps with me but for them it just doesn't seem to be worth the social suicide that comes with wearing the uniform.

Perhaps when the new uniform is released, there should be a resurgence of support behind the "wear your uniform day" concept. It would be a great way to get the message out there that we are relevant and keeping up with the times, while allowing youth to be proud to be a scout at school.

Thats all well and good encouraging parents but how can we make it "cool"? Do we need to just get a bunch of models walking around in public looking good? Or can we convince the youth in this great movement to make the PUSH?

CRAZY IDEA numONE
And when I say push I mean push. If every member made a promise to wear their uniform on a random day and say do one crazy thing in public... we'd be a sensation...

Clarification on crazy thing: walk into a mall and as protesters have done... walk really slowly in a group or formation through the mall. Not causing any danger or perceived danger to ANYONE. Clearly just making a statement.

CRAZY IDEA numTWO
Create a contest... get youth to wear their uniform to school & in public places. Random strangers (who are actually in uniform as well and are say... members of the Area Service Team give away prices to the youth seen in public with their uniform on... random times, randomly amazing prizes.

Thanks for all of your responses. You see, as a second year leader, I did not know this. My group, area and council (AFAIK) do not push this. How can we get National to push this so that all leaders are informed?

I agree with the worry about wearing a uniform to high school. Been there, done that. Glad I am not there. There, it comes down to personal choice. I would not push that issue with the Venturer Scouts and Rover Scouts. However, for the leaders who are past high school, do many of them (us) wear the uniform to work? Living in Ottawa, I have never seen it and I work in a MASSIVE office complex.

Finally, I like the ideas of prizes for wearing it to school. Perhaps we can ask teachers / parents to take pics of the kids at school with their uniforms on and enter it into a contest too? However, the "man on the street" instantly awarding prizes give instant recognition and will raise questions from the other kids. I like both ideas. National, any thoughts?

I like crazy ideas. They remind me of beavers and the fun we had. Thinking outside the box is great.

Beaver scouts and cub scouts have no problem wearing their uniforms to school but we need to remind scouts and up about how cool our uniform is before they will wear it to school.

Doing crazy stuff as a group is much easier as you have a group to fend off the negativity.

An annual event we have in Saskatchewan to be seen in public is the Yorkton couch rally. It is a photo scavenger hunt where the kids go around the city taking photos of them with their couch.
The couches are decorated with SC logos and the 1-800 number and the youth are asked to be in uniform.
You can see some photos and the rules http://24.72.114.15/photos/couch/couch2010.html (The photos take a while to download)

Prairie Heartland area also holds its kub kar rally down the hallways of a mall.

BP week tends to fall during the school break so we just have them go to Remembrance Day in uniform.

An annual event we have in Saskatchewan to be seen in public is the Yorkton couch rally. It is a photo scavenger hunt where the kids go around the city taking photos of them with their couch.
The couches are decorated with SC logos and the 1-800 number and the youth are asked to be in uniform.
You can see some photos and the rules http://24.72.114.15/photos/couch/couch2010.html (The photos take a while to download)

Here is a similar event held in Ottawa: http://web.ncf.ca/ad554/couchphotos.htm However, there is not much visible to associate the couches with Scouting. Your sign idea is a good one.

God! .. this is such a great Idea!! ..
I am not exactly from Canada ( I am a rover at El Salvador... but studing in Canada decided to enroll ) ...
Why I think this is so great?... because when I was 4.. a saw 2 girls with uniform on a hardware store... just shopping with their mom ... and... as kids my sis and I ask .. and that got us into scoutting ... 16 years later... I am still in and loving it

It might be hard to accomplish with older section.... but I am shure there is a way ....

We encourage our youth to wear their uniforms on Remembrance Day (which is a school day here) and for the entire BP week, but at least on Feb 22nd , if you cannot wear for the entire week. Myself and a couple of our leaders are old timers so we remember when the it was acceptable to wear your uniform, I remember seeing boys wearing their uniforms to school on the day of their meetings regularly. We do a lot of off site activities and they are always in uniform. We are also the only group in our area that regularly participate in parades (Canada Day, Christmas) even though we invite all the groups to join us. We fly all our flags and banners and hand out info to anyone who asks. I think next September I will see how many of our Youth will wear uniforms on School Picture Day.